Francesco Bernoulli
Francesco Bernoulli grew up in the shadow of the famous Monza race course in Italy where he and his friends would sneak onto the track and race the famous Pista di Alta Velocita bank turn. He was an instant winner on the amateur circuit and soon became an international Formula Racer champion. The ladies love Francesco's open wheels, youngsters look up to his winning spirit and fellow racers envy his speed. But Francesco's biggest fan is Francesco himself, as evidenced by his racing number. As the most famous race car in Europe, #1 Francesco is a favorite to win the World Grand Prix, which also makes him Lightning McQueen’s chief rival. Bio In Cars 2, Francesco is the main antagonist, at least on Lightning McQueen's side of the movie, and is considered very self-centered and cocky. He beat Lightning McQueen in the first race, which only made their rivalry grow larger. In the race in Porto Corsa, Lightning won the race, with Francesco second. The race in London was disastrous, as Francesco kept screaming "WHAT IS HAPPENING?!", due to the escape of Lightning McQueen on Mater. By the Radiator Springs Grand Prix, the rivalry between the two had settled down a little, and they can be considered "friends" although they do seem to still be major rivals at times. In Cars 2: The Video Game, Francesco re-appears as a playable character. In Francesco's New Look!, Francesco has decided to visit Radiator Springs, to see his friends Lightning and Mater. However, Mater accidentally swings his tow hook into Francesco's hood, giving him a tiny dent. Francesco claims that a high-media celebrity like himself could never be seen with a dent like that. He asks Ramone to fix him up, and Ramone gets carried away and gives him a flame job. Personality Francesco is cocky and self-centered, as proven on numerous occasions with Lightning McQueen. In Cars 2, Francesco serves as the main antagonist on Lightning's part of the film, and has a similar persona to Chick Hicks. Livery Francesco is painted red, white and green. He has red rims, as well as black rubber tires that read "Pasta Potenza". Model Francesco is based off a Formula 1 race car, as noted from specifications such as open wheels and a long hood. His top speed is 220 mph, with a 0-60 of 2.5 seconds. His engine is a 2.4-liter V-8, 18,500 rpm redline, with a horsepower of 750. Occupation Francesco is a world-renowned racing champion. Development While developing a Formula One character for the film, the developing team realized that a such open-wheeled car could make much more gesture than normal cars with fenders. Director John Lasseter said: "We don’t typically lift the tires off, partly because of the fender. But I thought, “Wow. To have an open wheel car, like Francesco, it gives us a lot more gestures.”. And so we thought, “Well this guy’s going to be gesturing like crazy. Let’s make him Italian, an Italian Formula 1 car. This will be perfect.”" Bernoulli’s design took four months to be finalized. as the team worked out where to put the mouth and how to give an F1 car a “windshield” for the eyes. Indeed, F1 cars do not have a windshield. Additionally, they are very long. As says Character Art Director Jay Shuster, "Formula cars have long snouts, so we had to really inflate his form to get the real estate we needed.". Ultimately, the eyes were placed on a sort of helmet that is integrated with the body. The mouth is at the end of a foreshortened nose, and not underneath it as originally envisioned. The fact that Francesco, as an open-wheeled car, has his suspension visible, posed some unusual problems to the animators. According to Shuster: “Francesco was the hardest design to complete because of his exposed suspension”. As supervising animator Dave Mullins said: "We always have fenders covering the wheels. So we can hide our dirty little secrets underneath the hood, because the chassis is moving around and stretching around. All you really see is the hard body of the car, and the wheels acting. With Francesco, we can see the connection between the wheels and the body. It was one of the big challenges trying to figure out how to support everything that’s going on with the body." The original suspension had to be reinvented in order to support all the stretchings that Francesco's gestures would cause, and the team had important struggles to achieve a believable suspension. Jay Shuster said: "We realized that when he takes off his front wheels, he's stretched like a rubber band and it's really ugly. Something like that took about two months to figure out what was going on—we developed a whole telescoping arm that had a pivot point." “The kind of physical expression we were able to get from Francesco’s movement took a lot of work but really looked great in the end. He was able to achieve these really extreme poses.” According to Story Supervisor Nathan Stanton, Francesco's character constantly reminded the development team of the character John Turturro played in The Big Lebowski. Consequently, John Turturro was chosen to voice Francesco. Appearances Feature Films *Cars 2 Video Games *Cars 2: The Video Game *Kinect Rush: A Disney/Pixar Adventure *Disney Infinity Comics *Francesco's New Look! Merchandising *Cars 2 Diecast Line (regular, metallic, chrome) *Micro Drifters *LEGO *Disney Store Diecast Line *Shake 'N' Go Trivia *Francesco’s last name, Bernoulli, is a reference to Daniel Bernoulli, a Dutch/Swiss mathematician who published ground-breaking theories on fluid dynamics and the conservation of energy. *Francesco's pit crew chief is Giuseppe Motorosi. *On Francesco's side is a logo presenting the letters FR in a design similar to the F1 logo. It is the abbreviation of "Formula racer", his racing league. *Francesco's tires are "Rotelli Tires Pasta Potenza". Potenza makes allusions to Bridgestone's Potenza tires, which were used by all Formula One teams from 2007 to 2010. Note that "Pasta Potenza" would literally mean "the power of pasta". "Rotelli" is a play between Rotini, a type of pasta, and Pirelli, which is now the official F1 tire supplier. It is possibly also a reference to Italian sports cars being called "Pasta Rockets". *Francesco often refers to himself in the third person. Quotes Gallery FrancescoBernoulli.png|Promo image Francesco.jpg FrancescoBernoulliCars2.png Francesco.PNG Franceso.jpg franceso catch.jpg Kaciao.jpg FrancescoBernoulli.jpg|Diecast FrancescoMetallic.jpg|Metallic Diecast FrancescoChrome.jpg|Chrome Diecast FrancescoMicroDrifters.jpg|Micro Drifters FrancescoActionAgents.jpg|Action Agents FrancescoBernoulliLEGO.jpg|LEGO Francescods.jpg|Chase Metallic Disney Store Francescosk.jpg|Shake 'N' Go External Links *‘Cars 2′ Character Stats, New Tokyo Party Clip and New Still as Sophia Loren Joins International Cast *In ‘Cars 2,’ John Lasseter Says Big Oil is the ‘Uber Bad Guy’ *[http://blog.caranddriver.com/behind-the-scenes-of-cars-2/ Behind the Scenes of Cars 2] *Cars 2 production notes *How to build a talking car ? Says 'Cars 2' Art Director Jay Shuster, it starts with Google. *"Story Supervisor Nathan Stanton CARS 2 Exclusive Interview" Category:Characters Category:Racing cars Category:Guest cameos, parodies Category:Porto Corsa Category:World Grand Prix Racers Category:Cars 2 Characters